Lady Grey-Thompson questioned why there are some people ‘who pretend diversity doesn’t exist or are able to hide from it’.
Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

BBC diversity adviser Lady Grey-Thompson has said the BBC may have to spend £100m on better reflecting the make-up of its audience and called for executives who fail to embrace change to be fired.

The former Paralympian is a member of BBC director general Tony Hall’s diversity action group, aimed at improving the corporation’s disabled and black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) representation.

Following a campaign led by Lenny Henry, another member of the BBC’s action group, the corporation announced new diversity measures last year, including a £2.1m fund intended to help BAME talent.

Grey-Thompson said the BBC may have to end up spending 50 times that amount.

“Money helps and it does matter. If all we had at the BBC was £2.1m, I’d be going ‘that’s not enough’, but it’s how you can pull in those other budgets and how you can be creative,” she told a Royal Television Society event in London on Monday.

“If you were going to ring-fence an amount, it would probably have to be £100m,” she said. “It’s not just about money, it’s got to be about shifting attitudes, and if people don’t deliver, you have to give them an ultimatum and say: ‘This is not good enough.’

“How come in this day and age there are still people who pretend diversity doesn’t exist or are able to hide from it? Ultimately … I’d fire them, but I’d fire lots of people.

“People are able to hide behind discrimination – against disabled people, against women – are able to hide and discriminate in lots of ways and there has to be a point where we say: ‘Do you know what, this is not good enough, we just don’t want someone like you in the organisation.’ I would be much tougher.”

Asked if she was talking about people at the BBC, Grey-Thompson said: “There are people everywhere, it’s not just the BBC. I’ve met some really really good people, I’ve also met some people who have said: ‘I need to do better, I need help’, and that’s a good start. It exists in every organisation I have come close to.”

Grey-Thompson said diversity at the BBC had “got immeasurably better but it’s not as good as it needs to be. We need to do things much quicker than we have been doing in the past. The BBC should be leading the way. It is a big organisation, it has the ability to change, to do things differently”.

Tunde Ogungbesan, the BBC’s head of HR for diversity, inclusion and succession, said the £2.1m BAME fund would be an annual spend by the BBC.

Challenged that it only amounted to 0.1% of the BBC’s total content spend, Ogungbesan said: “It’s not the only thing that relates to diversity, there are other areas. It’s actually a lot more than that.”

Sky aims for 20% representation

Sky head of comedy Lucy Lumsden said there had been a “sharp intake of breath” when the satellite broadcaster announced last year that it would try to hit its diversity targets by the end of 2015. They include 20% of significant on-screen roles going to actors with a BAME background.

“But it’s really healthy giving it a date,” she said. “It’s going very well, on-screen is going very well. Behind the scenes is more difficult, we forced a bulge in the pipeline and that is always going to be provocative, but without being provocative you don’t create change.”

Lumsden, a former BBC executive, said the corporation’s target date of 2017 was a “long way away”.

Ogungbesan denied it was too far away and said the plans now in place had to be given a chance. He said it was a challenge for the BBC that executives did not get bonuses and could therefore not be penalised if they missed targets, as will be the case at Channel 4.

“The big challenge at the BBC is we don’t get bonuses, unfortunately. We have to find other ways we can bring sanctions on board. One of the things we have been doing is celebrate success, and where it is not happening we are ensuring they are noted and the word is getting out there, so that they probably won’t be able to get commissions going forward in the future.”